ChatFeatured raises $2M to boost brands' visibility in AI chatbots
What's the deal? Toronto-based ChatFeaturedDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised an oversubscribed $2-million (C$2.8-million) pre-seed round, led by Storytime CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → with participation from Garage CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and B&Y Venture PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The AI search optimization startup will spend the money on product development, go-to-market efforts, and expanding its five-person team.
What's the endgame? ChatFeatured's product identifies how companies are mentioned by major chatbots, then builds a strategy to lift their visibility to consumers. It generates content and LLM-friendly website fixes to make a brand's web footprint easier for chatbots to pull from.
Why now? AI tools are eating into web search. A study by SEO agency Eight Oh Two found 37% of consumers used AI tools to begin a web search rather than a traditional search engine at the start of 2025.
Bot traffic is also surging. As of May 2025, more than half of internet traffic came from bots rather than humans, according to Calgary's Koat.aiDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
By the numbers: The round sits in the bottom half for size, landing around the 46th percentile among comparable deals — modest capital for an early-stage bet on a fast-shifting market.
What they're saying: Chief executive officer Farris NasrDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → said the technology could level the playing field for smaller brands. "It used to be a David versus Goliath thing for these small businesses, and it's almost like David and Goliath now," he told BetaKit.
Not all models carry equal reach. Anthropic's Claude is the most popular, especially for SaaS businesses, so much so that ChatFeatured charges an additional fee to track a company's visibility in it, chief technology officer Nithiiyan SkhanthanDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → said.
The signal: As chatbots become a default search tool, a new optimization layer is forming — one aimed at how AI models see brands, not how Google ranks them. ChatFeatured is an early bet that "answer engine optimization" becomes as routine as SEO once was.
Read more: BetaKit
